§ 4
But after these scrappy notes about Jealousy and how people protect their minds against ideas, and especially the idea which is God, and against the mental intrusions of their fellow-creatures conveying ideas, I understand better the purport of that uninvited society, which he declared insisted upon coming to the Great Conference upon the Mind of the Race, and which held such enthusiastic and crowded meetings that at last it swamped all the rest of the enterprise. It was, he declared, to the bitter offence of Dodd, a society with very much the same attitude towards all impersonal mental activities that the Rationalist Press Association has to Religion, and it was called the Royal Society for the Discouragement of Literature.
“Oh—obviously,” he said….
This Royal Society was essentially an organization of the conservative instincts of man. Its aim was to stop all this thinking….
And yet in some extraordinary way that either I did not note at the time or that he never explained, it became presently the whole Conference! The various handbills, pamphlets in outline, notes for lectures, and so forth, that accompanied his notes of the Proceedings of the Royal Society may either be intended as part of the sectional proceedings of the great conference or as the production of this hostile organization. I will make a few extracts from the more legible of these memoranda which render the point clearer.
§ 5
Publishers and Book Distributors
(Comparable to the Priest who hands the Elements and as much upon their Honour.)
The Publisher regrets that the copy for this section is missing, and fears that the substance of it must be left to the imagination of the reader. This is the more regrettable as the section was probably of a highly technical nature.
§ 6
The Young Reviewer
Here, again, Mr. Boon’s notes are not to be found, and repeated applications to Mr. Bliss have produced nothing but a vague telegram to “go ahead.”
§ 7
The Schoolmaster and Literature
“Essentially the work of the schoolmaster is to prepare the young and naturally over-individualized mind for communion with the Mind of the Race. Essentially his curriculum deals with modes of expression, with languages, grammar, the mathematical system of statement, the various scientific systems of statement, the common legend of history. All leads up, as the scholar approaches adolescence, to the introduction to living literature, living thought, criticism, and religion. But when we consider how literature is taught in schools——”
Here the writing leaves off abruptly, and then there is written in very minute letters far down the page and apparently after an interval for reflection—
“Scholastic humour
O God!”